Commercial photographic processes form the basis for a thriving business concerned with the photographing and rapid processing of large groups of individual photographic subjects. Such commercial activities include the photographing of the individual students at a school, members of a church or the members of an athletic team. Such jobs generate hundreds of individual exposures of photographic subjects, which are typically processed as a series of continuous rolls of photographic film, often spliced together and processed in bulk.
In the typical commercial photographic developing plant, a roll of film is developed, and then spliced with additional rolls of developed film from the same photographer or the same photographic job. By way of example, a commercial photographer may take school photographs at a secondary school consisting of a number of individual student grades, freshmen, sophomore, junior and senior. The photographs of the members of each class may fit on a single roll of film. After processing, all of the rolls of film from a particular secondary school photographic session may be spliced together for processing for the individual photographer undertaking the work.
After the film has been developed and spliced into this type of long roll format, it is subject to a preliminary visual inspection, and then transported to an automated photographic printer. The automated photographic printer sequentially exposes each photographic negative frame through a series of lenses, generating a corresponding series of exposures on sensitized photographic film. This film is then subject to a chemical developing process, producing a corresponding long roll of developed photographs.
Each subject in a typical photographic sitting such as the one above described is typically permitted to make an order selection, based on a series of choices presented by the photographer. For example, the student may elect to receive a single 81/2".times.11" photograph, a collection of 5".times.7" photographs, a larger collection of wallet-size photographs, or some combination of the foregoing. Typically, the automated photographic printer is provided this order information through a series of machine instructions, or by instructions provided manually to the printer by an operator. In either event, following the exposure and development of the long roll of negatives, the commercial photographic plant produces a long roll of developed photographs, which contain a sequentially organized order for each student. The content of each order, however, differs for each subject. In the past, separation of the long roll of developed photographs into individual subjects orders has been done manually. In this process, a human operator unrolls the long roll of developed photographs, and visually inspects each section of the roll. The operator identifies the photographic subjects on successive sections of the long roll, and manually cuts the photographic paper into individual sheets. The individual subject's photographs are then manually collated and placed into an envelope for storage and shipment.
Recently, automated print cutters have become available which simplify and accelerate the process of separating the individual photographic orders from the long roll of developed photographic prints. To take advantage of this new equipment, the automated photographic printer is provided with a punch mechanism; Each exposure of photographs for an individual subject is separated from the adjoining exposures by a single hole punched in the margin of the photographic paper between the two exposures. In this fashion, an individual 81/2".times.11" exposure for a subject is made in the photographic printer, the photographic paper is advanced, and the same negative is exposed through a lens deck carrying multiple lenses onto the next section of photographic paper, resulting in multiple exposures of the photographic subject on that section. When the individual subject's photographic order has been completely exposed, the automated photographic printer then places a pair of closely spaced punched holes on the photographic paper margin. When the photographic paper so punched is presented to the automatic paper cutter, the paper cutter recognizes the single punches as separating the individual pages of a subject's order, and recognizes the double punches as separating the pages of one subject's order from the pages of the following subject's order Nevertheless, the separation and bagging of the individual subject's orders has remained a manual operation. This is a tedious job, and subject to substantial human error. In addition, it is frequently necessary to insert additional materials into the envelope along with the photographic exposures, for example, order forms for reorder, advertising brochures, stiffeners and picture frames. These additional requirements tend to slow the process further.
The present invention provides a mechanism for accomplishing these tasks in an economical and expeditious fashion.